The topography of generosity: Asymmetric evaluations of prosocial actions.

Abstract

Prosociality is considered a virtue. Those who care for others are admired, whereas those who care only for themselves are despised. For one's reputation, it pays to be nice. Does it pay to be even nicer? Four experiments assess reputational inferences across the entire range of prosocial outcomes in zero-sum interactions, from completely selfish to completely selfless actions. We observed consistent nonlinear evaluations: Participants evaluated selfish actions more negatively than equitable actions, but they did not evaluate selfless actions markedly more favorably than equitable actions. This asymptotic pattern reflected monotonic evaluations for increasingly selfish actions and insensitivity to increasingly selfless actions. It pays to be nice but not to be really nice. Additional experiments suggest that this pattern stems partly from failing to make spontaneous comparisons between varying degrees of selflessness. We suggest that these reputational incentives could guide social norms, encouraging equitable actions but discouraging extremely selfless actions.

Moral Signaling through Donations of Money and Time

“…One stream of work looks at the differences between time-and money-donations, finding that, relative to moneydonations, appeals for time-donations are more effective (Liu & Aaker, 2008), donors view timedonations more abstractly (Macdonnell & White, 2015), and time-donations are more strongly influenced by social expectations (Lee, Piliavin, & Call, 1999). A separate stream of work looks at third-party evaluations of prosocial actors (e.g., Barasch, Levine, Berman, & Small, 2014;Johnson, 2020;Klein & Epley, 2014;Newman & Cain, 2014). Since prosocial behavior is often motivated by the desire to maintain a good reputation (Griskevicius, Tybur, & van den Bergh, 2010;Sperber & Baumard, 2012), these third-party perceptions are likely to sharply influence donation decisions.…”

Principles of Moral Accounting: How our Intuitive Moral Sense Balances Rights and Wrongs

“…The study of praiseworthy and blameworthy acts have proceeded largely independently. Some research has compared moral judgments about blameworthy versus praiseworthy acts, documenting both symmetries (e.g., De Freitas & Johnson, 2018;Gray & Wegner, 2009;Siegel, Crockett, & Dolan, 2017;Wiltermuth, Monin, & Chow, 2010) and asymmetries (e.g., Bostyn & Roets, 2016;Guglielmo & Malle, 2019;Klein & Epley, 2014;Knobe, 2003;Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Salovey, 2003), and other work has studied the ethicality of morally ambiguous acts that are not clearly blameworthy or praiseworthy (e.g., Levine et al, 2018;Levine & Schweitzer, 2014;Rottman, Kelemen, & Young, 2014). But the majority of this literature has theorized (separately) about the mechanisms underlying judgments about morally negative acts (e.g., Alicke, 1992;Baez et al, 2017;Cushman, 2008;Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006;Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009;Guglielmo & Malle, 2017;Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993;Inbar, Pizarro, & Cushman, 2012;Niemi & Young, 2016;Paxton, Ungar, & Greene, 2012;Schnall, Haidt, Clore, & Jordan, 2008;Tannenbaum, Uhlmann, & Diermeier, 2011;Tetlock et al, 2000;Young & Saxe, 2011) or positive acts (e.g., Critcher & Dunning, 2011;Johnson, 2018;Johnson & Park, 2019;Line-Healy & Small, 2013;Monin, Sawyer, & Marquez, 2008;Newman & Cain, 2014).…”

The nature of obligation's special force

“…However, they fail to judge unintended, obligation-upholding side effects to be equally praiseworthy (Knobe 2003a;2003b;Leslie et al 2006). People also more readily incorporate the magnitude of the consequences of proscriptive obligations than prescriptive obligations into their judgments of the agent (Gneezy & Epley 2014;Klein & Epley 2014). Together, this research suggests that judgments of proscriptive obligations incorporate factors related to causality, intentionality, and consequences more than do judgments of prescriptive obligations.…”